


The Part Of You That Smolders

by Blacklaceslytherin



Series: The Stars Are Bright Tonight [1]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, Childhood, F/M, Female Protagonist, Female-Centric, Jyn-centric, Loss of Parent(s), Mental Instability, Minor Cassian Andor/Jyn Erso, Non-Linear Narrative, Original Character(s), Parent-Child Relationship, Stardust - Freeform, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-02
Updated: 2017-01-02
Packaged: 2018-09-14 03:11:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,567
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9157657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blacklaceslytherin/pseuds/Blacklaceslytherin
Summary: In the beginning there is Stardust-star·dust (stär′dŭst′)-n. a. Dust formed in very hot gasses ejected from stellar atmospheres or in supernova explosions. b. A cluster of stars too distant to be seen individually, resembling a dimly luminous cloud of dust. c. A dreamlike, romantic, or uncritical sense of well-being.-but this is not that stardust.





	

       Let's start with Lianna Hallik, a.k.a Tanith Pontha, a.k.a Kestrel Dawn: a street fighter, a smuggler, a petty criminal. She begins these incarnations of herself by taking odd jobs, sleeping in the streets, never intending to do either forgery or theft _(lie)_. It's best if she doesn't catch the attention of the empire.

       Kestrel ends as she smuggles food into the Hosnian system. It's risky, but the citizens relief follows her as she leaves, and Kestrel thinks that maybe she can do good. Too bad smuggling food to the children of a famine is a punishable crime, but burned alias was a price she was willing pay. 

       Tanith ends in a grey room with sterile air, a botched operation that leads to troopers chasing her through Cloud City's narrow and winding streets. Capture was inevitable, but nothing can hold her when she doesn’t want to be held. Who were those troopers trying to fool when they took her in? (They must of known that she would escape.)

       Lianna ends with a failed attempt of trying to steal an officer’s TIE-fighter. She thought cells couldn’t hold her, but it was Tanith with her nimble fingers and agile bones that could never be held. Lianna is a drunken mess with a propensity for gambling and fighting and bad decisions, but we must do what we can to survive-. She is not agile. She is not nimble.

 

(But she is quick, thirteen years of looking over ones shoulder cannot be erased by even the finest persephian liquor)

 

Truth: it hard to survive with blood and death and chaos and pain crowding every minute, waking and sleeping

 

 

Addendum: Corulag jail is much different than Lianna expected. Forgive her for breaking the officers arm, leaping of a building in broad daylight, and almost drowning three troopers (who said resisting arrest couldn't be fun?), she was frustrated.

 

     These incarnations end with her in an imperial labor prison on Wobani, with a cellmate who snores and a ceiling that leaks. It doesn’t matter, friend, fugitive, captive, freeman, prisoner, she-Lianna, Tanith, Kestrel- has always been good at changing identities. For them it’s as easy as changing shirts between meals.

 

(Easier than shirts even. She almost equates it to blinking, but that is a set practice.)

 

Some days she cannot separate them. Lianna's guttural drawl changes into lilting Coruscant vowels and Tanith's flighty fingers and nonexistent moral code become Kestrel's-no, _J's-_ values and desire to help and fight and -" _no, stop"_ -

 

Sometimes she remembers cold rain and terror. She dreams of white armor and guns and fear. 

Those dreams belong to a person who doesn't exist. The girl on Lokari who survived the Clone Wars is now not even a footnote in history.

 

 

Truth: No footnote can ever be erased

 

 

-

 

 

      Before them is Sgt. J, a fighter. Saw Gerrera doesn’t know sympathy, doesn’t know kindness, but he does know rage. A girl transmutes from a child to a soldier, with hate in her heart and fierceness written across her face. This is a soldier who plans raids, extractions, who becomes Saw’s right hand, who makes deals when he can’t breathe, who executes drills and simulations, who never breaks, not again.

 

  (She also executes imperialists, but that’s a different story)

 

       J doesn’t make friends, but she does look after her fellow rebels. Extra bandages from rations for Kelsi who got shot with a blaster, bartering in the marketplace for old holos, just to see  joy gleam in the eyes of battle-hardened mercs far older than her, more gruel given to a lost child with green eyes and orange frills around her ears who has never gotten enough to eat.

 

( _“half-breed”_ sneers a young soldier who kicks away her toys, when older, he will never realize that the young girl who carries the child away will one day be his undoing, but then, Governor Tarkin never could admit his mistakes)

 

    But J forgets her mothers touch (warm, gentle, ready), wants to forget her father’s last words to her ( _"everything I do is to protect you"_ ). Why is it easier for her to think he’s dead? It’s less complicated to be a rebel fighter if your father isn’t a traitor. J dies when Saw abandons her at sixteen, happy birthday to a girl with iron in her bones.

 

 

  Can a man be brave if he is afraid? Trick question, because girls with pain in their souls and fire in their hearts are never afraid

  (Leia was in charge for a reason).

 

 

Truth: Anakin Skywalker loved with his whole being, served up the whole galaxy (burning, bloody) to the woman who he said owned his heart.

Truth: No one asked Padme Amidala what she wanted.

Truth: Not even Darth Vader scares Galen Erso, for while Vader has his command, has his troops, has his power, Galen Erso is a man with nothing left to lose.

 

 

 

Lesson to be learned: Never threaten a child to force their parents good behavior. It will only end one way.

 

-

 

After all of them, however, is Jyn Erso.

           Jyn Erso is cynical, she has seen to much and lived not enough, so Jyn trades an introduction to Saw for a chance to be left alone, and doesn’t think much of it. Jyn Erso also hears a message from her father, and is given a chance to destroy something that should have never been allowed to exist in the first place.

           Jyn Erso finds her father on Eadu ( _frantic, all she can feel are tears_ ), kills the trooper who tries to shoot him, but goes through the pain of losing him for a second time, but this time there is no possible happy ending for them. This Jyn has to defend a man she last saw 13 years ago, a day ago, an hour ago (“ _papa”_ her mind supplies), in front of politicians who don’t _believe._ Remember that rebellions are built on hope.

 

_“Welcome Home”_

 Jyn Erso stages a suicide mission on Scarif, but never once gives up. She plans and schemes and bullshits her way through the base-

 

( _"The most protect base in the galaxy",_ the galaxy obviously hasn't met Jyn Erso)

 

      -She hides herself under black armor (changing was always easy for you: Jyn, Tanith, Lianna- “ _stop”)_  and K-2SO finds the disc. She climbs her way up, adrenaline and hope coursing through her veins.

 

_This_ Jyn Erso dies on a crystalline beach with a cocksure spy at her side and Kyber in her hands, eyes open to the coming storm.

 

_This_ Jyn made a family for herself-Bodhi, Baze, Chirrut, Cassian-.

 

_This_ is Jyn Erso, and she dies at twenty-two.

 

 

 

 “Suddenly the rebellion is real for you?”

   It has always been real.

 

 

-

 

In the beginning, though, there is Stardust-

           

            star·dust (stär′dŭst′)- _n._ **a.** Dust formed in very hot gasses ejected from stellar atmospheres or in supernova explosions. **b.** A cluster of stars too distant to be seen individually, resembling a dimly luminous cloud of dust. **c.** A dreamlike, romantic, or uncritical sense of well-being.

 

            -but this is not that stardust. Stardust was born to Lyra and Galen, raised in seclusion for the first six months on the icy rim planet Vallt. She spends her time between crying and feeding by playing with a white doll until her father’s friend Orson (now Lieutenant Commander Orson Krennic, then Director) comes and takes them to Coruscant.

 

 

(Later, she watches as her mother shoots the man she thought was family, later, Jyn Erso cannot connect the man that Stardust knew to the man that Cassian shoots, the man that told her she _failed_ (newsflash-she won)).

 

           

           Stardust speaks her first words on Lokari,  grows up skipping through her father’s work station. Her father is very important you see, for he is building the renewable energy plant, _“I’m not lying, Sani!”_ Stardust is three when the clone war begins, when the clones attack. She flees with her family up a mountain of rubble, stones dislodged under her tiny feet.

          She is happy when her father is asked to research Kyber back on Coruscant. Stardust likes Coruscant much better, now that she can remember it. The B’ankor Refuge has colored windows and large holodecks, and mama gets her a droid! Her name is Mac-Vee, _“Young Ms. Erso I am a  MV nanny droid”_  and Stardust ver much likes playing with it _._

 

Her papa is distant now, though, and Stardust would take Lokari if it meant he would come back.

 

          Stardust dies on Lah’mu. It’s a pretty planet, if a little damp, but she gets to be with papa now, and he reads her stories before bed. Her mama teaches her how to farm, how to sew, how to cook, how to hide. They’re talents that will serve her well later, but everyone hoped it wouldn’t come to that. On the day _they_ come (white armor, white capes, _uncle, why?_ ), she is playing outside because she had finished her chores early wanted to check on the newborn birds that lived in the nearest rocky outcropping.

 

Stardust **fractures** when her mother- _mama-_ (warm smiles and lilacs and muddy hands and- _"You will never win"_ ) dies, **breaks** as she runs to the caves (" _you must always remember where this is child")_ and **shatters** when it is not her father who opens the hatch, but Saw ( _"save the rebellion save the dream"_ ) .

 

 Remember the strongest stars are made of Kyber.

**Author's Note:**

> So I haven't written a full on fic in about a year, and this was an extremely wild ride. I actually had to do research. Anyway, my [tumblr](http://blacklaceslytherin.tumblr.com) is here if you want to drop by.


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